


the long, delirious burning blue

by pocketsized17



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Sky Pirates, also Bioshock Infinite (kinda), inspired by Guns of Icarus Online
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5276207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketsized17/pseuds/pocketsized17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcadia Bay is a city in the sky, and Max Caulfield just wants to know who this mysterious, infamous airship pirate is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

**Day 0**  
  
Maxine Caulfield stood in the Prescott Photography Studio and watched as Nathan tinkered with the camera, replacing the glass plate. The lens was directed at a set of empty chairs, remnants from the morning’s customers; a newlywed couple who had entered the shop dressed in their finest. They had been completely wrapped up in each other, succumbing to a giddy joyfulness that Nathan had striven to combat, scowling them into seriousness just long enough to keep them still while he took the photograph.  
  
“Do you want another portrait, or did you just come to stare creepily at my back?” Nathan demanded, snapping Max from her mindless reverie. She shook her head slowly from side to side, then realized that Nathan was regarding her with mild distaste, presumably awaiting some sort of answer.  
  
“Sorry, I was just…stopping by, I guess,” she said, and Nathan half-turned back to the camera, though not before Max caught a glimpse of his eyes in mid roll.  
  
“Yeah yeah, that’s what you keep saying. If you’re hanging around here because you’re hoping my father will offer you a job, then you’re wasting your time. The Prescott name means something in Arcadia Bay, and there are certain standards we have to uphold.”  
  
Despite the obvious jab, Nathan’s attitude and behavior were downright pleasant compared to how he’d acted the first time Max had wandered into the shop nearly a month ago. She really should’ve expected it, considering the family he came from. Though she’d been away from Arcadia for several years, the Prescotts had ruled the city far before she’d ever left, and probably would continue to _ad infinitum_. And the Prescotts weren’t exactly what you’d call kind-hearted or likeable, though God knew they could be charming when they wanted to. Nathan had never tried to use his charisma on Max, but he had gradually become less hostile in her presence, and that had to count for something. Maybe.  
  
Max opened her mouth to respond, but was effectively silenced when someone came barging through the door. He was dressed in the uniform worn by officers of the city guard, a thick mustache framing his frowning mouth. Max didn’t know him by name, but his face was familiar.  
  
“Can I help you with something, Madsen?” Nathan asked, his tone bordering on insolence. Though, Max had to admit, that was his default manner of speaking.  
  
The officer grunted. “I’d hoped your father would be in. We’ve got a bit of a…situation.”  
  
“Yeah? What is it?”  
  
Madsen shot Max a glance, but apparently decided not to mention her presence. He returned his attention to Nathan instead. “Reports have been coming in this morning claiming that the Blue Pirate is approaching from the west. We were hoping to put together a blockade, keep her from getting too close to the city. Access to your father’s airships would be greatly appreciated.”  
  
While the guard continued to briefly explain the plan, Max’s brain faltered and fixated on a single word. _Pirate_? He wasn’t suggesting that Arcadia Bay was under threat from actual _pirates_ , was he? Max knew that there were pirates roaming the skies somewhere beyond the Windstorm Reaches because raiding cargo ships was a time-honored way to make money, however illegal it was. And yes, sometimes a puffed-up captain got it into his or her head to attack an actual city—which never tended to go well—but why Arcadia? Compared to its neighbors, Arcadia Bay was tiny and insignificant; a small dwelling among the clouds whose only defining feature was the Blackwell Academy for Accelerated Youths. Unless they were hoping to make off with an airship-full of scholarly students, Max didn’t see what use anyone would have for targeting the city.  
  
“Did you say something about a pirate?” she asked, too curious to remain silent.  
  
Officer Madsen paused to contemplate Max with an expression near disapproval. “I did. The Blue Pirate. You must be a newcomer if you haven’t heard the tales about her.”  
  
“Her?”  
  
“Well,” he amended, “Her and her crew. They fly an unmarked ship with a blue balloon, hence the moniker. No one actually knows who she is, or why in the hell she won’t leave us alone.”  
  
He subsided into a bout of dispirited grumbling, and Max resisted the urge to fire off fifty more questions. She settled for one.  
  
“How do you know it’s a she?”  
  
“Some of the guards tried to parlay with her once,” Nathan replied, a smirk overtaking his face. “Got an up-close look at her and everything, but things didn’t turn out so well. Only one of them made it back, and he seemed pretty…confused.”  
  
“Yes, and she’s been a thorn in my side ever since.”  
  
Madsen shoved both hands into his pockets and sighed, rocking forward onto the balls of his feet. “Well, I’ll send a few of mine over to the estate to call on your father, but if Sean happens to stop by here before then, you’ll let him know what I’ve said, won’t you?”  
  
“Will do, officer,” Nathan said.  
  
With a curt nod, Madsen turned on his heel and strode back through the door of the shop. The light tinkling of bells contrasted greatly with his demeanor, and Max found herself holding back a snort of laughter.  
  
Beside her, Nathan returned to the camera without further ado, and Max wondered if this was the start of his completely ignoring her. But, after a tense moment during which she fidgeted uncomfortably with her too-long skirts, he broke through the silence.  
  
“If you’re just going to stand there, you might as well do something actually useful and grab me another plate.”  
  
And Max, who didn’t need to be told twice, scurried to fetch the item.  
  
…………………………………………  
  
“Have you ever heard anything about the Blue Pirate?”  
  
Sprawled on the grassy lawn outside of Blackwell Academy’s dormitories, Max had a book propped against her knees which she was supposed to be reading, but in actuality was only staring at the print as if it was a collection of meaningless black marks on a white blank page. Her mind, which was prone to daydreaming even when there wasn’t a single thing interesting happening in her life on which to dwell, kept bringing her back to thoughts of pirates and Arcadia Bay. Specifically, one pirate in particular, the swashbuckling captain who seemed to have some sort of grudge against the city.  
  
Leaning against a tree about a couple feet away, fellow classmate Warren Graham was buried in studies of his own, and nearer to Max, on a blanket she had brought and neatly spread across the grass, was Kate Marsh, another classmate. Both looked up when Max spoke.  
  
“The Sapphire Menace of the Skies?” said Warren, casting aside a sheath of papers. “I’m surprised you _haven’t_ heard anything.”  
  
Kate threw him a look of mild reproach. “Max didn’t live here when she first started bothering the city, so how is she supposed to know about the pirate?”  
  
“How long ago was that? When the city was first, er, bothered?” Max asked, and the other two exchanged a glance.  
  
“A year, maybe?” Kate ventured, and Warren nodded. “It’s been happening on and off for a while now.”  
  
It could have been happening for the last five years and Max wouldn’t have known about it, not when she’d been living so far away. But Arcadia Bay was home once again, and if it was at the center of a mystery involving an enigmatic pirate captain, she wanted to know as much about it as possible. Merely for curiosity’s sake, of course.  
  
“Does anyone know _why_ they’re targeting Arcadia Bay?” she asked. “Seems like an odd choice.”  
  
Warren glommed onto the question enthusiastically. “That’s what everyone says! But if there’s a reason that Mayor Wells or anyone else knows of, they’re not telling us. It makes no logical sense at all, so maybe it’s _not_ logical. Maybe someone has a grudge against this place.”  
  
With a shake of her head, Kate easily dismissed Warren’s theorizing, but Max found it a compelling hypothetical explanation. It was much more convincing—and plausible—than what he continued to spout off for several subsequent minutes after his mind had switched fully into scientific mode. Kate eventually gave up in trying to divert his attention to something else, especially since she couldn’t contribute anything else of actual factuality to the conversation. Officer Madsen had apparently not been exaggerating about how little information they had about her. Max’s incessant curiosity had to remain unsatisfied for the moment.  
  
With the session of studying effectively broken up, Max retreated back to the ladies’ dormitories where she managed to while away several hours—entirely (though unintentionally) skipping supper downstairs—until a quarter past eleven. Groggy with sleep, and suddenly dreading the next morning’s seven o’clock literature class, she wriggled out of her school-standardized dress and into a nightgown. Max washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and then tumbled gratefully into bed, fully prepared for a sweet, uninterrupted night of sleep…


	2. Day 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Groggy with sleep, and suddenly dreading the next morning’s seven o’clock literature class, she wriggled out of her school-standardized dress and into a nightgown. Max washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and then tumbled gratefully into bed, fully prepared for a sweet, uninterrupted night of sleep…_

**Day 1**  
  
Which was not, as it happens, what the universe had in mind. In the early hours of the morning, far before the sun would rise, the harsh sound of human voices jarred Max from the middle of a pleasant dream. Popping one eye open, she saw nothing but absolute darkness until, slowly, her vision adjusted. And then there was a small orb of light bouncing across her view through the window. Someone with a lantern, running.  
  
She felt rather than heard the boom; a tremendous, shuttering rumble that rattled the bed and shook the framed photographs hanging on the wall. Another boom, just as close, reverberated through the room, and Max heard screams and shouts from the hallway, followed by the thumping of footsteps sprinting for the stairs.  
  
Max’s head was fuzzy, the word _what?_ looping through her sleepy consciousness, but she was aware enough to recognize that if everyone else was fleeing the building, she probably should be too. Throwing both legs over the side of the bed, she got to her feet and briefly considered putting on some clothes…but then another thunderous clap sounded in the air and she scrapped that idea. She compromised with a thick overcoat and a pair of sturdy boats, the second shoe barely tugged onto her foot before she hurried through the door and joined the commotion.  
  
As was par for the course, Max was a bit late to the party. There were one or two other stragglers, but most of the girls in the dormitory had already fled outside, and Max scurried after them. But that only led to a scene of even greater pandemonium, with crowds of gathered students who were, it seemed, supposed to line up in an orderly fashion on the lawn breaking rank when another round of booms cracked and roared like gunfire.  
  
The sky lit up behind her and Max turned, a hand shielding her eyes. The booming noise had sounded like gunfire because it _was_ —or, close enough. It was the blasts of cannons flaring up from the northwest edge of the city where Blackwell was located as two airships circled each other. Every time one of them fired, the sky around them was momentarily illuminated and awash in brilliant reds and oranges. Max thought, for a fleeting second, that it would make for an excellent photo.  
  
As Max stood, staring, instructors were careening across the lawn, screaming at students to stay still and stop panicking. The crowd was rapidly dispersing, however; a snowball rolling down a hill that was only growing larger and whose progress couldn’t be stopped. And Max couldn’t exactly blame them for wanting to put as much distance between them and the cannon fire as possible, especially when several more airships entered the fray. They were all baring down on one, lone ship, but then another came swooping into view, chasing the reinforcements, and everything erupted into utter, smoke-concealed chaos.  
  
When a stray cannonball smashed into Blackwell’s stately clock tower, Max knew it was time to find someplace a bit safer to be. Trotting east along Grant Street, she figured that her best course of action was to move out of range of the airship skirmish as quickly as possible. Her second course of action would be to find out where it was that people took refuge during unlikely situations such as this, but that would have to wait. It seemed more prudent not to stand idly about contemplating her next move, so she put one foot in front of the other and shuffled in her long nightgown down the path of paved stone.  
  
Max reached another pocket of people, a crowd that had amassed for no reason that she could tell initially. That is, until she heard the screaming, and saw those on the fringes backing away from a flurry of swinging arms and dancing feet up beside the memorial fountain in town square. They were brandishing _blades_ , swinging swords, a small scattering of people whose faces were unknown to Max, and who were dressed mostly in black. An officer with the city guard was trying to hold them off, but she was outnumbered and kept being forced to inch backwards, receding ground. None of the assorted townspeople had jumped in to help, though a few of them looked as if they might try, their own lack of weapons notwithstanding.  
  
Right from the frying pan to the fire, Max thought as she turned the next corner away from the fighting. She pushed straight through the front door of the first building she passed; someone’s brick townhouse home. While she definitely felt odd about trespassing, she didn’t particularly think that anyone would blame her, not when the relative tranquility of the streets had been shattered by strangers wreaking havoc. Strangers who had appeared directly after airships began blasting holes in the sky, and when only yesterday Max had heard Officer Madsen talking about how that blue captain and her crew were headed toward Arcadia Bay. Max wasn’t so frightened and bewildered that she couldn’t see the obvious signs of _pirates_ staring her in the face. And really, she knew that, if she was being honest with herself, there was a large part of her that wanted it to be exactly that.  
  
There was a wide, banistered staircase just past the short foyer, and Max started to climb it, hoping to reach a passageway that would lead to a rooftop from which she could (safely) watch the action below. But footsteps came pounding from around a bend in the staircase, freezing Max in her tracks. Two guards were rushing toward her with a frantic gleam in their eyes. Seizing upon Max, entirely disregarding her slight frame, empty hands, and rumpled pajamas, they charged.  
  
Max opened her mouth to shriek, but the noise died in her throat when someone came leaping over the banister. The figure kicked out at the knees of one of the guards and bashed the other over the head with a flintlock pistol before, whirling, she met Max in a wide-eyed stare.  
  
“Max?”  
  
“Chloe?”  
  
The face hovering only a foot away from her own was strange and familiar all at once, but the eyes were unmistakable. Blue eyes to match the new, blue hair which was cut short to her ears and partially covered by a dark cap. Her clothes were different too, and while Max vividly remembered how much Chloe had hated wearing skirts or dresses, she’d never seen her dressed quite so…masculinely. In opposition to nearly every social convention regarding proper attire, Chloe was wearing a men’s undershirt under a jacket, the sleeves of which were rolled to her elbows, and a pair of black trousers. And to top it all off, a slender dagger was hanging from a belt on her hip.  
  
Not sure of which part of this was most bizarre—the dagger, the changed appearance, the fact that she had more-than-half expected that she would never see Chloe again—Max stood dumbly before her childhood friend, gaping openly. This brought a wry smirk to Chloe’s face, and she waved a hand in the air between them.  
  
“I’m surprised to see you too,” the blue-haired girl said, and Max jumped a little. “But this probably isn’t the place for a reunion. For one thing, those assholes could regain their senses and attack us at any moment…”  
  
She glanced at the guards—one kneeling and groaning, the other out cold—and Max followed her gaze, then snapped her eyes back to Chloe’s face when she continued speaking.  
  
“And for another, Madsen’s on my tail, so we need to get the hell out of here. Come on, Caulfield.”  
  
Gesturing for Max to follow, Chloe started clomping back down the grand staircase. Max was only a step behind, moving mechanically and beginning to wonder if she had really woken up or whether she was actually still asleep in her dormitory room, dreaming. Everything was just the perfect kind of crazy to be a dream, and yet she could feel the smooth oak of the handrail under her hand, the chilly nighttime air on the nape of her neck once they’d stepped outside so palpably. She’d never had a dream even half so lucid as this.  
  
“Um, where are we going?” she managed to ask, and Chloe turned her head briefly to meet Max’s questioning gaze.  
  
“Back to the rendezvous point. It’s not far.”  
  
And it wasn’t, not really, though Max suspected that that feeling was heightened by the fact that everything seemed to be passing in a blur. As Max’s brain tried desperately to play catch up, the outside world fell away, leaving her with a deluge of thoughts, questions, and memories. Whenever she remembered the best, worst, and even most mundane moments of growing up in Arcadia Bay, Chloe Price was invariably tied to almost every single one of them. Their friendship went back so far that Max couldn’t recall a time before Chloe, though she had certainly known one after. It had been her father’s business prospects that had uprooted Max and her family from Arcadia, carrying them hundreds of leagues to Emerald City.  
  
Once she’d settled in there, Max had more or less failed to keep in touch with Chloe, breaking about a dozen promises in the process. So there’d been a part of her that was terrified when she’d received the letter from Blackwell Academy congratulating her on her acceptance into the prestigious school, so nervous was she about the idea of running into Chloe again. But, when after a week had gone by without their paths crossing and Max had dared to ask Kate whether a Chloe Price still lived in Arcadia Bay, she’d learned that her old friend had left the city about two years ago and never looked back.  
  
But Max wasn’t in the best position to be looking into the past, not when her nightgown had suddenly become a tripping hazard in all this whisking away she was being subjected to. And before she knew it, she was slipping through the open doors of a warehouse near where the airships usually docked. Well, it was Arcadia Bay’s version of a warehouse, and therefore neither large nor particularly well-stocked, but Max wasn’t exactly scoping out the inventory.  
  
She stumbled after Chloe into an increasingly shadowy end of the main floor, and when a voice spoke from the darkness, she caught the toe of her boot on an uneven floorboard, surprised into distraction. A pair of quick hands, _Chloe’s_ hands, shot out to steady her. She tried not to react to that, to the fact that her real, live, (former?) best friend was touching her for the first time in _years_ , and failed miserably.  
  
“You’re back early.”  
  
The girl who had spoken edged out of the shadows so that she was more or less illuminated by the traces of moonlight that had snuck in through the warehouse’s high windows. She was about Max’s age, blonde and, well, _wowser_ she was beautiful. Max, as a human being with functional eyes, had no trouble recognizing that—but then she realized that she was staring with a creepy amount of intensity, and her cheeks flushed pink.  
  
“Well, you’re one to talk,” Chloe was saying in response to the girl. “So, did you find him?”  
  
The girl shook her head. “Not so much. I mean, I saw him from a distance, but only as I watched the slippery bastard hitch a ride on one of the Prescotts’ ships. It’s probably leagues away by now.”  
  
“Shit. Guess that means we should—oh, double shit.”  
  
There was a tremendous shattering noise and glass rained down upon them as one of the windows exploded. Max yelped and reached up instinctively to cover her head, because a smart person knows that you’ve got to protect your vital organs. It was this possible-overreaction that finally drew the attention of the unfamiliar, beautiful girl to Max.  
  
“You brought company?” she said, raising an eyebrow at Chloe, who shrugged.  
  
“It was an accident, also complicated, but now is definitely not the time. Max…just, come on. It’s not safe out there to be by yourself.”  
  
As if to prove her point, another window exploded and Max wasn’t about to second guess her choice to tag along, once again, as Chloe darted for the door. _What the hell is even happening?_ Unfortunately, nobody seemed ready or willing to lay out the answers for Max, and her rising bewilderment only intensified when they sprinted right for the docking area, stopping short as an airship with a bright blue balloon stalled in the air before them and extended a ramp.  
  
Wait. Blue balloon, Chloe’s hair, a sudden, seemingly pirate-based attack on the city. It was all so blindingly obvious that Max was surprised she hadn’t put two and two together from the first moment. Although, in her own defense, the shock of seeing Chloe had occupied a whole different place in her head, blocking out everything about pirates. She really should’ve realized that they weren’t discrete, random happenstances, because coincidences like that? Yeah, they’re usually a bit more than just accidental chance.  
  
The revelation rooted Max to the ground, halfway across the ramp.  
  
“You’re—but you’re—” she floundered, pivoting to gape at Chloe, though this time for different reasons.  
  
“I’m Chloe, you’re Max, now get the hell on the ship!” Chloe replied, giving her a shove in the right direction.  
  
It was when she careened forward that Max became very much aware of her precarious position, and she scurried along the rest of the ramp until she was soundly on the deck of the airship. Then and only then did she feel secure enough to turn on Chloe, an accusation forming on her lips, but was beaten to the punch by a man with a multicolored parrot on his shoulder.  
  
“Damn it, did you not see our flare? We’ve been trying to get your attention for the past—who the hell is this?”  
  
When Chloe’s response wasn’t immediately forthcoming, a girl with hair cut even shorter than her old friend’s and a pair of goggles dangling around her neck, interrupted.  
  
“Frank, focus. Chlo, we’ve still got Jefferson in our sights. We pulled around just in time to see him hijacking a ship, so Frank did a little something that slowed him down for a while. He’s too far for us to catch up, but we should be able to tail him if we hurry.”  
  
Chloe threw up her hands, and Max detected a manic gleam in her eyes that she knew all too well. “Well, shit, what are we still doing here then? Let’s go! Full steam ahead, and all that.”  
  
“Aye aye, captain,” the girl with goggles replied, her tone dripping with irony, before she disappeared from sight. The beautiful blonde girl followed suit, though not before flashing Max a warm, almost knowing smile that caught her off guard. And Frank, which was apparently the name of the rather bedraggled-looking man with the parrot, shot her a parting glance as well, though it was tinged with suspicion.  
  
Max watched them go, watched them take their positions for sailing, and a part of her wanted to yell at them to stop, to let her get off, because her place certainly wasn’t here on this airship participating in whatever insane mission everyone was talking about. But, Chloe was standing right beside her, and so she hesitated just long enough for it to be too late. The ship with the bright blue balloon pulled away from the docking area, and rose up above Arcadia Bay before gliding off into the starry expanse ahead.  
  
“You came back,” Chloe said, and when Max turned to her, she saw a storm cloud of emotions swirling behind the other girl’s eyes, not-so-carefully concealed beneath a feigned nonchalance.  
  
“I did,” Max agreed, going with the simplest answer. But then, because she couldn’t contain it any longer, “You’re the Blue Pirate.”  
  
Chloe rubbed at her neck, almost abashedly. “Uh, that’s what they call me. It’s just a stupid nickname though.”  
  
“How the—what the hell, Chloe? I mean, how did that even _happen_? And what are you _doing_?”  
  
Max probably could have gone on for a while longer while she tried to formulate her thoughts, but she forced herself to stop before she was consumed by the rambling. After a cursory sweep of their surroundings, Chloe nodded toward the bow of the ship. “I, uh, think we have some things to talk about, so why don’t we step inside my humble abode? The captain’s quarters are right over here.”  
  
And boy had Chloe outfitted the cabin to her taste. When Max ducked inside the iron-enforced door that Chloe directed her to, all she could register in her initial, split-second impression was sheer, messy chaos. Then she adjusted, and gradually admitted to herself that it wasn’t _that_ bad, but it most definitely heralded the resounding essence of Chloe Price.  
  
Bits of paper, unframed paintings, and colorful sketches were tacked to the walls, protesting against the stately—if somewhat defaced—desk that dominated the closest half of the room. Every available surface was littered with clutter, and stacks of books and other writings were heaped haphazardly across the floor. Against the far wall was a clumsily-made bed which lacked a frame, and that was where Chloe set her sights, traversing the disorderliness to plop down on the edge of the mattress.  
  
Hesitating for only a moment, Max sat down beside her, and then immediately worried that she was overstepping some sort of boundary. Now that (part of) the shock was beginning to wear off, it was almost too easy to look at Chloe and feel as if no time at all had passed. Or, rather, that she had discovered the ability to rewind time to the earlier years of her adolescence, back to the place where this person next to her was her closest friend and not some estranged, virtual stranger. It was a bizarre kind of emotional whiplash she was experiencing, and Max wanted only one thing more than to collapse backward onto this bed and sleep off the last couple of hours.  
  
“So, before I say anything else, I should probably apologize for kind of accidentally kidnapping you,” Chloe said, while for the most part avoiding eye contact.  
  
“That’s okay. I mean, it’s not the strangest thing that’s happened to me tonight.”  
  
“Fair point. This is pretty crazy, isn’t it? Probably more so for you though, I’d bet.”  
  
Max nodded, her eyes bugging out as she stared dazedly into a distant corner for a moment. She shook herself clear of that, and fixed Chloe with her most naggingly expectant expression. “So, are you ever going to _actually_ explain anything to me? As the victim of your accidental kidnapping, I think I deserve a little more than, ‘well, this is weird.’”  
  
A ghost of her old smirk curled at Chloe’s mouth. “Sure you want to hear all the sordid details?”  
  
Max gave her a very specific look and Chloe laughed.  
  
“Wow, Max, you haven’t changed a bit. All right, it’s like this. A couple of months after you…left, I met Rachel. Er, long blonde hair, about your height? Yeah, that’s her. She’s my first mate, if you want to be official about it. Anyway, we both had this idea that we wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Ditch that godforsaken town they call Arcadia Bay and roam the rest of the skies, maybe even escape to some distant place beyond the Windstorm Reaches. And then everything went to shit.”  
  
“But, you _did_ leave dodge,” Max pointed out, and Chloe nodded slowly in response.  
  
“Sure, eventually. The shit was in between. Rachel and I, we were both enrolled at Blackwell at the time, and one morning I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in her room, and she didn’t go to any of her classes for a few days, and I went from confused to way beyond worried. I went looking, but I didn’t find her; she found me. Damn, I need a smoke.”  
  
Disrupting herself mid-story, Chloe went rooting around in the drawers of the desk, finally emerging with a cigarette that she lit with a stray match she plucked from the floor. She took a desperate drag, exhaling white smoke, and Max’s nose scrunched up in an unconscious grimace.  
  
“Sorry, Max,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry at all, but Max let that slide for the moment. Cigarette smoke was a small price to pay, all things considered.  
  
“What the fuck was I saying? Oh yeah, Rachel. So, she shows up at my room at Blackwell one night, soaking wet and shaking, talking about how Mark Jefferson, city councilman and artist extraordinaire, jumped her outside of the academy and kept her tied up in his basement as some sort of sick muse. And apparently she wasn’t the only one.”  
  
Max shivered, thinking of the cheerful smile Rachel had given her. “God, that’s awful.”  
  
“Well, it gets worse,” Chloe replied, brooding around her cigarette. “We went to the guard for help, which was the wrong fucking move, because it turns out that Jefferson is in with the Prescotts. Everything Rachel said was discredited, and when Jefferson started to turn the tables back on us, we knew that it was now or never. So, we hijacked an airship and got as far as we could go before we needed to refuel. Which, as it turned out, was still a city in the Reaches, but at least we’d put a couple hundred leagues in between us and Arcadia.”  
  
Now that Max had stopped to consider it, the name Jefferson rang a faint bell, and for a moment she couldn’t place it. Then she remembered the second or third day of her Techniques in Painting class at Blackwell, when the instructor had invited in a guest to lecture. Mark Jefferson. Relatively young, with a trimmed goatee and a charismatic presence. Many of the students, the ones who knew who he was by reputation, seemed enamored with him, and they hung onto his every word.  
  
It was difficult to imagine him capable of what Chloe described, though the more Max delved into her memory of his lecture, the more she seemed to recall something unsettling behind his charm. It was the type of niggling _something_ that registers in your subconscious, an intuitive feeling that someone is just _off_ , even if their actions speak differently.  
  
In her peripheral vision, Max glimpsed a Chloe who was still brooding, and she felt the urge to distract her from any unpleasant thoughts.  
  
“What was the name of the city that you ended up in?” she asked.  
  
The vulnerable look in Chloe’s eyes retreated as she returned to the present. “Angels’ Perch. It’s up high, and to the north.”  
  
“Is that where you met…?” Max hedged, gesturing uselessly. Luckily, Chloe was clever enough to understand what she was getting at.  
  
“Frank and Victoria?” Yeah. They’re both messed up people with their own problems, so basically they fit right in here. My fucking ragtag merry band.”  
  
“But you’re not thieves, right? I know you’re technically pirates, but you’re not going around boarding other people’s airships and stealing all of their stuff, are you?”  
  
“Nah, you’re right,” Chloe said, knocking ash from the tip of her cigarette. Max tried not to think about how it drifted right onto the floor. “We tend to avoid the petty and go right for the serious shit. I made this promise to myself that I’d never go back to Arcadia Bay, but Rachel needs closure, and it’ll be worth it when I get to see that elusive bastard finally squirm.”  
  
She fell silent, but before Max could attempt to jump start the conversation, Chloe was discarding the butt of her cigarette and turning to face Max with something like her usual flippancy. “Well, Maximilian, now you know the humble origin story of the Great Pirate Queen, the dreaded scourge of the winds and Arcadia Bay’s one true nemesis.”  
  
“No one calls you any of those things,” Max said, trying to sound unamused, but the urge to laugh was too great, and she couldn’t conceal a smile.  
  
“Always calling me out on my shit. What did I ever do without you, Caulfield?”  
  
“Lord knows,” Max replied, and then nearly dislocated her jaw with an enormous yawn.  
  
Chloe shook her head. “You’re exhausted. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” She glanced quickly around them. “There’s…not a lot of sleeping space on the ship, so go ahead, take my bed.”  
  
“But, what about you?”  
  
“I’ll just…sleep on the sofa.”  
  
Rising to her feet, Chloe shuffled over to the sofa and began sweeping armfuls of clutter onto the floor. Even cleared of all the odds and ends that Chloe had used it as a surface for, the sofa looked like a rather unappealing place to sleep. It was threadbare and stained, and too short for her to lie on without having her feet dangle over the side.  
  
“No way,” Max protested. “We can share the bed. It’s not like we haven’t done that before.”  
  
“Sure, Max, when we were both kids. But that was a long time ago.”  
  
The truth of that cut keenly into Max, and a familiar feeling of guilt crept over her. An apology lingered on her tongue, but she couldn’t think of the words to make it adequate. And somehow, she didn’t think that Chloe would appreciate the sentiment. Words didn’t have nearly as much meaning to her as actions did; that is, if she hadn’t changed so much that that was no longer true.  
  
Edging backwards on the bed, Max scooted until her back was against the wall. Then, she patted the spot beside her.  
  
“Maybe so, but I promise I still don’t snore.”  
  
Chloe let out a huffed breath, rolling her eyes, but Max could read the acquiescence all across her face.  
  
“Fine, all right. I guess that makes more sense than waking up tomorrow with my neck all out of whack. But first I’ve got to take care of a few things.” She moved to the door, hanging off of the frame by one arm. “Don’t wait up, okay?”  
  
“That won’t be a problem, trust me. I’m just about ready to drop.”  
  
“Good, get some shut eye.” And then, hesitating for a moment longer, Chloe added, “Goodnight, Max,” before disappearing around the corner.  
  
Even if she had wanted to stay awake for a minute or so longer, Max was a goner the instant her head touched the pillow. But her sleep was distracted, and she kept tossing and turning over in the blankets until the mattress dipped, someone climbing into bed beside her. Gently, Chloe eased half of the covers away from where they were twisted around Max’s legs, and Max gave a muttered sigh in response, only twenty percent awake. Rolling again, Max’s hand brushed against something soft and she pulled it closer, holding on tight, before drifting off into a contented sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! Feedback is appreciated, and if anything is confusing just let me know!


	3. Day 2

**Day 2**  
  
When Max’s eyes blinked open the next morning, she discovered an empty place in the bed where Chloe had been. Apparently some things about Chloe besides her sense of fashion had changed, because Max had never known her friend to be a morning person. Well, presumably she had some new responsibilities, what with being the airship's captain and all.  
  
Dragging herself from the warm covers, Max remembered her nightgown and how it was officially the only piece of clothing she had with her, besides the jacket and boots. Thankfully, someone else had realized this, and a fresh change of clothes was waiting for her on the antique desk. They were similar in style to the outfit that Chloe had been wearing yesterday, but a bit more colorful. They couldn’t have belonged to Chloe anyways because they fit Max far too well; even the trousers, which Max was absolutely not used to. Still, as soon as she put them on, she could see the appeal. Her legs felt freer, like she could take off running without anything to hinder or hold her back.  
  
When Max cautiously and curiously poked her head from the captain’s quarters, the first person to cross her path was most decidedly not Chloe. It was the girl who had featured prominently in Chloe’s explanatory story, Rachel, and she perked up instantly when she spotted Max attempting to creep inconspicuously toward the stern.  
  
“Max! Hi! I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”  
  
Rachel strode right up to Max, barely stopping short of invading Max’s personal space, and stuck out her hand. “I’m Rachel. Rachel Amber. Chloe’s told me plenty about you, and last night she filled us in about what happened. I’m sorry you wound up stuck on our little ship.”  
  
Absently, Max accepted the hand shake, and tried not to think again about how attractive Rachel was, and whether Chloe had noticed too. Whether Chloe had made a habit of noticing girls, like she’d seemed to suggest that night when—no, no, not _that_ , not _now_.  
  
“Um, nice to meet you? I’m Max. Which you already knew, and I’m an idiot, so I’ll just shut up now.”  
  
But Rachel only laughed. “Adorable _and_ pretty. I see Chloe didn’t brag nearly enough about you. Well, Max Caulfield, welcome aboard the _S.S. No Name_ , because our intrepid captain likes to maintain an air of mystery more than any reasonable person should.”  
  
“Leave her alone, Amber. She doesn’t want to hear any of your shit.”  
  
With effortless ease, Chloe jumped down from the raised platform where the airship’s controls were kept, entirely forgoing the ladder. She came right up to Max and slung an arm over her shoulders, causing Max’s eyebrows to lift in surprise at the sudden closeness. But she wasn’t complaining. Chloe’s arm around her was warm and sweet, and like all of Max’s fondest childhood memories wrapped up in one gesture.  
  
Rachel pouted, though with a mischievous gleam in her hazel eyes.  
  
“Aw, Max and I were just getting to know each other, mother hen.”  
  
“Yeah yeah. Don’t you have anything better to do? Like checking on Vic and those repairs?”  
  
“Yessir, captain,” replied Rachel, giving a two-fingered salute. “We can talk later, Max!”  
  
She scampered off, descending through an open hatch to the lower decks of the ship. If Max was being honest with herself, she definitely wanted to explore every inch of this airship and stick her nose into each of its hidden corners, but Chloe was leading her in another direction.  
  
“Don’t mind her, she’s crazy. Come on, I saved you some breakfast.”  
  
Dropping her arm from Max’s shoulder, Chloe climbed the ladder up to the controls, and Max followed. She found herself standing under a small, enclosed dome of glass, like she was in a bubble surrounded by the brilliant blue of a clear, October sky. On one of the control consoles, lying amidst buttons and levers, was a cloth napkin upon which someone had placed a slice of buttered toast.  
  
“Really though, if Rachel said anything strange she was completely joking and shouldn’t be taken seriously,” said Chloe, and Max could’ve sworn she looked slightly nervous. It was oddly endearing.  
  
“No, she was sweet. But is she always that…high-spirited?”  
  
“Yep,” Chloe chuckled, “That would be Rachel. She’s got a lot of energy to burn through. I swear she would drive herself bonkers being cooped up on this tiny hunk of metal, only she’s just delusional enough to feel like all this sky is open territory. Anyway, this is for you. I remembered that you hate strawberry jam, which was all we had, so I went commando with it.”  
  
Chloe held out the toast, and Max’s stomach decided to answer for her by growling loudly.  
  
“Thanks,” she said, after they had both shared a quick laugh. “It’s perfect.”  
  
Max dug into her breakfast as Chloe began to fiddle with the airship’s controls. Although Max wasn’t an expert by any standards, after about a minute of observation she started to suspect that Chloe wasn’t actually _doing_ anything and was merely feigning productivity. As the self-entitled queen of awkwardness, Max could spot an uncomfortable situation when it smacked her in the face, and this one was only going to get worse if neither of them said anything. So she opened her mouth.  
  
“So, why doesn’t the airship have a name?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Chloe looked blankly upwards from a rotating knob that she was twisting back and forth. “Oh, right. I don’t have that good of a reason for keeping it nameless other than that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maintaining a low profile while skirting around the law usually keeps you out of trouble. But then people started recognizing the balloon, we got a reputation, and so now it’s pretty much pointless.”  
  
“What was she called before?” Max asked. “You mentioned that she wasn’t exactly a new purchase, so she must’ve had a name that you painted over or something.”  
  
The question appeared to catch Chloe off guard. She paused to think about it.  
  
“I think it was… _Time’s Crossing_. _The Time’s Crossing_.  
  
“That’s pretty,” Max offered, and Chloe didn’t shy away from her gaze.  
  
“Yeah, it is.”  
  
Someone shattered the moment by shouting Chloe’s name, hollering loudly enough to wake the dead and reach them through the glass dome.  
  
“I’ll be there in a minute!” she yelled back. “Calm your goddamn horses!”  
  
“Duty calls?” Max guessed, because although the individual words of the shouted call hadn’t been distinguishable, the general tone sounded like that of someone impatiently demanding assistance.  
  
Chloe shrugged. “Suppose so. Sorry, Max, but it looks like I’ll have to leave you to your own devices. Try not to get yourself keelhauled in the meantime.”  
  
With a cheeky smirk, Chloe hopped once more from the elevated platform and disappeared from sight, leaving Max to wonder what exactly keelhauling even was. Must’ve been a pirate thing. Anyway, with both the toast and Chloe gone, Max saw no reason to stay at the controls, and every reason to explore the unnamed airship as her heart so desired, starting with the lower decks.  
  
The way below was dim and musty, and Max had to pause for a moment to get her bearings. She’d descended through the main, unlatched hatch and found herself standing in a cramped, unlit corridor that led to who-knows-where. Presumably there was some kind of engine room down there, and a place where the other crew members slept. A kitchen, perhaps. The ship was relatively small, but the toast had to have come from somewhere.  
  
She picked a direction and stuck to it, trailing a hand along the cool, metallic wall as she walked along the corridor. A door blocked her path, sturdy and solid but not impossible to move. Also, it wasn’t locked, which was about as open an invitation as any. Max placed both hands on it and pushed, watching as it swung free of the frame. For a long couple of seconds, she was blinded by an intense and unexpected onrush of light, and only after some profuse blinking could she see where she was and who she was intruding upon.  
  
The far wall of the room in which she’d chosen to snoop curved with the bow of the ship and was made entirely of glass, like the control platform. Unfiltered sunlight streamed through it, nearly as bright as if she’d been standing on the upper deck. Up against this wall was something like an elongated telescope—or a periscope maybe—and it looked to be pointed straight ahead. The scraggly man with the parrot was sitting on a chair in front of it, peering through the other end, and the girl with the goggles and the short hair was standing by, a sheath of paper in her hands. Frank and Victoria.  
  
“Four degrees north, two vertical, no delineations. Now will you please just take a fucking guess already?”  
  
Victoria sighed. “Fine, Frank. Ten?”  
  
He swiveled around in the chair, grinning. “Not even close, Vicky.”  
  
“Ugh, fifteen?”  
  
“Higher.”  
  
“This is complete bullshit. Seventeen?”  
  
“Bingo.”  
  
“You’re disgusting,” Victoria replied, making a face.  
  
“Pompidou would beg to differ. You see, he understands that it’s all about how you—hey, what are you doing here?”  
  
Two sets of eyes—well, three counting the parrot—snapped over to Max, and she flushed instantly.  
  
“Sorry, I was just, um, exploring and I didn’t know that anyone was in here. I didn’t even know what _here_ was even, but now that I do I’ll just be going…”  
  
“No, wait a second,” Victoria called, and the appraising way she glanced up and down Max had her ten times more nervous and uncomfortable. “So, you and Chloe go back, right?”  
  
“That’s right,” Max replied, worried that she had just walked into a trap.  
  
“Did she and Rachel ever…?”  
  
“Ever what?” Max asked dumbly before the obvious occurred to her. Right, _that_. Her face grew hotter, if that was even possible, burning from forehead to the top of her neck. And Max couldn’t exactly have even said why she was blushing so furiously over that simple question, especially when she didn’t even have the answer.  
  
“Bang,” Frank supplied helpfully.  
  
Max took a deep breath, but couldn’t suppress all of the babbling. “I wouldn’t know actually because, uh, Chloe and Rachel weren’t friends until after I left Arcadia so, yeah, I have no idea about that but, well, is that the kind of thing that either of them would, er, do?”  
  
Victoria chuckled, and there was only a glint of evil in it. “Oh Max, you’re sort of adorably naïve.”  
  
This being the second time that day she’d been referred to as ‘adorable’—and this time by someone who didn’t strike her as quite as well-intentioned as Rachel—Max bristled at the remark.  
  
“Excuse me for falling out of touch with my best friend. I figured that two of the people who are around her the most would know something like that, but I’m sorry I asked.”  
  
“Hey,” Frank interjected. “Vic meant nothin’ by it. We were just curious, you know how it is. Looks like Chloe plays some things close to her chest.”  
  
“But, there _was_ that girl in Golden City,” Victoria added.  
  
“Oh.” Frank got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Oh yeah. I don’t think I could ever forget _that_.”  
  
“Gross.”  
  
Max had to concur, though she couldn’t help trying to picture what Frank was referring to. Chloe kissing someone. Chloe kissing a girl. She didn’t know why it made a difference whether Chloe had spent the last several years going around kissing girls or boys, but somehow it did. In Max’s mind, at least.  
  
With reckless abandon, someone came barreling past Max into the navigation room, and she jumped sideways to avoid being beamed by the door.  
  
“Hey, assholes, where’s—Oh hi, Max!”  
  
It was Rachel, and she was running on enough energy to power the ship, probably. Someone should really look into that.  
  
“Hi Rachel,” Max said with an awkward wave. “Were you looking for me?”  
  
“I was looking for all of you, as a matter of fact. Chloe’s called a crew meeting, and she said you two scrubs can leave the scouting alone for a couple of minutes. Finish up what you’re doing and meet at the stern.”  
  
Frank’s parrot squawked accusatorily, and Rachel paused to extend her arm. With practiced coordination, the bird landed on her forearm, talons encircling her in a strong grip.  
  
“You’re invited too, Pompidou,” she said. “Let’s go.”  
  
After waiting for Frank to take one final measurement of what Max assumed was Jefferson’s ship’s position, they shuffled as a group back through the cramped corridor and out onto the upper deck. The sun’s rays spread across Max’s shoulders, but the high altitude cancelled out any warmth they could supply. She was grateful for the shirt's long sleeves, and the added layer of the vest.  
  
Chloe was leaning slouchily against one of the thick cables that attached the balloon to the hull, but she straightened when crew plus Max emerged from the hatch.  
  
“The gang’s all here. Good. Frank, what’s our status?”  
  
“Same projected route as before. It’s hard to tell where Jefferson thinks he’s headed, but he’s definitely taking the crow’s path there. Rach hasn’t needed to adjust course since last night.”  
  
“And how’s the hull?” Chloe asked, turning to Victoria.  
  
“It’s fine now. I patched the worst of it, but she’ll need some major refitting next time we head into port.”  
  
Max studied Chloe’s face while she stepped into captain mode. It was a side of her best friend that she’d never seen before. Bossiness, sure, Max had been on the receiving end of _that_ enough times to recognize it in Chloe, but this was different. She was leading, and maybe it wasn’t in the most professional manner in the world, but she seemed to be really good at it, like she’d found her place. Other than behind the lens of a camera, Max didn’t know where her own place was, and she envied her friend for that just a little.  
  
“We’ll try not to get attacked before then,” Chloe mused. “Rachel? Anything to add?”  
  
“Nothing here. Oh, except if Max wants to learn how we clean the engine, she can tag along with me. I was going to take care of that now. Speaking of which, you’re welcome, Chase.”  
  
“You’re such a doll, Rach,” Victoria replied with a simpering smile, and Rachel countered it with one of her own. As outwardly competitive as it was, their brief smile-off _seemed_ like it came from a friendly place—as far as Max could tell, that is. She was beginning to understand how much of an outsider she was among these people who’d been travelling and living together for so long, practically like a family. Still, she didn’t feel nearly as much like an intruder as she might of, and Max suspected that Chloe’s presence was a large part of that.  
  
“As riveting as I’m sure Max would find that,” Chloe said, “We’ve already got other plans. Meeting’s over.”  
  
“Back to the grind,” Frank muttered, and everyone dispersed. Except for Max, who was waiting for Chloe to illuminate her on what these so-called plans were. But Chloe wasn’t making any move to do anything at all, and in fact leaned backwards against the cable once again, crossing her arms.  
  
“Was that—you just said that to get me out of cleaning the engine, didn’t you?” Max ventured.  
  
A grin tugged at Chloe’s mouth. “Good guess, Super Max. No need to thank me or anything.”  
  
“Asshole,” Max muttered, rolling her eyes. Chloe’s grin widened.  
  
“I figured you’d rather just keep nosing around the ship, typical Max style. Or you could stay in my room if you want. I’m sure I’ve got some, er, literature that you could read.”  
  
Max narrowed her eyes. “It’s porn, isn’t it?”  
  
“Not _all_ of it is porn. Probably. Anyway, take your pick.”  
  
Pushing off with her boot against the cable, Chloe retreated backwards a few steps, apparently ready to leave Max to her own devices. Max considered her options, her gaze drifting across the ship and back to Chloe.  
  
“Well, what are you going to do?”  
  
“I’m headed back up to the nav perch,” she said, jabbing her thumb toward the glass dome. “It’s my usual hideout.”  
  
“Mind if I join you?” Max asked, hoping she wasn’t interrupting upon what was supposed to be alone time, but Chloe only shrugged.  
  
“If you want, Caulfield. I can show you what all the buttons do.”  
  
“Sounds dangerous," Max remarked.  
  
“What’s life without a little danger?” Chloe replied with an impish smile and, feeling bolder than she had in months, possibly years, Max followed her.


	4. Day 3

**Day 3**  
  
The next morning, Max took a bath. Chloe helped her with the hot water. Victoria, who Max learned was the resident engineer—Frank was officially in charge of the guns—had rigged up a system that used excess heat from the engine to heat the water. In just about twenty minutes, Max had a full tub and was sinking blissfully into it.  
  
Her hair needed a wash pretty desperately, and she worked a frothy lather of soap through the wet strands with her fingers. Then she soaped up the rest of her body, going all in for it because there wasn’t any reason not to, before dunking her head under the water and rinsing off.  
  
There was something about cleanliness that Max associated with normalcy, with order. Basically, with everything that was the opposite of this constantly-moving place. Max wondered if anyone at Blackwell or Arcadia Bay was looking for her, or whether they had just assumed she’d been a casualty of the attack on the city. Hopefully her parents hadn’t realized that anything had happened to her. It would take a couple of days for any news to reach them in Emerald City, but maybe she should think about finding a way to send them a note or something.  
  
Max spent most of the afternoon tucked away in Chloe’s room, taking her up on yesterday’s suggestion. She picked through Chloe’s reading material, skimming some of it and casting aside others. A bit of it _was_ rather pornographic in nature, but definitely not as much as she’d been afraid of. She took a hard pass on all of _that_ because there are some things best left unknown, and even Max’s curiosity wasn’t enough to tempt her to thumb through the pages of a thin booklet entitled “The Confessions of Juliet Watson: Or, the Wanton Adventures of a Young Lady in the City of Vices.”  
  
Hours later, when she was sprawled out on Chloe’s bed, absorbed in a surprisingly sentimental book of poetry, someone barged into the room without knocking.  
  
“Hey, Mad Max. Have you been hiding in here all day?”  
  
Boots clomping against the wooden floorboards, Chloe sauntered over toward the desk and perched on the edge of it. Her head was missing its usual hat, and she ran a hand through her blue bangs, smoothing them out.  
  
“Just about,” Max said, marking her place in the book and then setting it aside. “How’s the hunt for Jefferson going?”  
  
“‘Bout the same. He’s going to need to stop and refuel sometime soon, but then so will we. We’ve actually been gaining on him a little, so it doesn’t seem like he knows he’s being followed.”  
  
“I’m sure you’ll be able to outsmart him,” Max assured her, but she saw a flicker of doubt in Chloe’s eyes.  
  
“I don’t know, he’s tricky as shit. And he’s got plenty of friends in high places, which is a lot more than I can say for us. But, I didn’t track you down to talk about Marcus.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Yeah, I came to tell you that it’s almost time for supper. Victoria whipped up the last of the fresh fish we had on board. Salmon, if you care, which I know you do because that was always your favorite kind of fish. So get your boney ass in gear before Frank eats it all.”  
  
Because her love of salmon had only increased since she was thirteen, and also because she’d somehow worked up an appetite even though her level of physical activity had been minimal at best, Max decided not to keep Chloe in suspense. They met the others by the bow of the ship since it was a nice night, and Max was realizing that, as a general rule, the crew preferred fresh air over being cooped up below decks. There was a set of a ramshackle table and chairs crowded into the corner of the tiny kitchen, underneath the engine room, but nobody seemed to use them.  
  
And Max had no complaints about that. Sitting cross-legged on an empty crate with a plate full of broiled salmon and canned beans on her lap, she felt the peace of being almost enveloped by the starlit sky as the airship drifted along through it. She smiled around a forkful of food, watching as Rachel and Victoria joined forces to verbally harass Chloe, with occasional gibes provided by Frank. When the bait was perfectly laid out for her, Max overcame her reticence and joined in.  
  
“It’s true. She always used to sleep with a candle by her bed, even when other people were around.”  
  
“Max!” Chloe protested, her cheeks tinged pink. “That wasn’t supposed to be common knowledge!”  
  
“Relax, Chlo,” added Rachel. “We all already knew that your bark is worse than your bite.”  
  
Rachel’s opportunities for further teasing were cut off when Chloe launched a physical attack, and she was too busy fending off the blue-haired girl’s overeager pinches to impart any witticisms. Max finished off her dinner in silence, simply enjoying their antics. Not for the first time, she wished that her father’s camera hadn’t been too expensive and valuable for her to take with her to Arcadia Bay, and that she had it here. Being able to play around with the Prescotts’ equipment had temporarily scratched that itch, but it wasn’t nowhere near the same as having her own, and up in the airship she didn’t have access to anything at all. Even the most rudimentary, run-down camera would satisfy her desire to capture that moment, and the many others that had caught her attention over the past couple of days.  
  
When everyone’s plates were cleaned, Frank cleared them without being prompted, and Rachel wandered off somewhere with Pompidou perched on her arm again. Victoria lingered a bit longer to talk shop with the captain, but the mechanical lingo they traded back and forth flew right over Max’s head. She left too however, heading down the ladder for the night’s first shift of tracking Jefferson, and then only Chloe remained.  
  
Max inched forward, scooting up until there was enough room for her to lie back without bumping the railing. At this end of the ship, so close to the front, she could catch an unimpeded glimpse of the sky overhead without the balloon blocking the view. Max tucked both hands under her head and gazed upward at the sea of stars, too many to count. To her surprise, and without a word, Chloe rolled over onto her back beside her.  
  
“Are we friends?” Max asked, the words falling from her mouth more quickly than she could call them back. She hadn’t meant to ask that question without any buildup, but she couldn’t deny that it had been plaguing her for a while now.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Chloe said, after a beat. “Maybe we shouldn’t be after so long, but in a lot of ways it feels like you never left. We’ve both changed, obviously I know that, but I don’t think that you could ever not feel like my friend, Max.”  
  
As silly as it was, Max felt her throat begin to constrict, and she swallowed past the hard lump that had formed there.  
  
“I’m so glad. And I’m so, so sorry, Chloe. That sounds completely lame and pathetic, but I don’t know how to say it any better. I was an idiot for leaving you like that, and if you hated me right now I would understand. I would.”  
  
Max heard a shuffling beside her, and let her head tilt to the side to see Chloe shifting onto an elbow. Their faces were closer together, and Chloe didn’t flinch away from the prolonged eye contact, almost trapping Max in her brilliant blue gaze.  
  
“Max. Don’t be stupid, of course I don’t hate you. I might’ve tried to, for a while, but clearly that didn’t work out too well.”  
  
“You must’ve been so mad at me though…” Max said, imagining the aftermath of her leaving Arcadia Bay like she’d never allowed herself to before.  
  
Only a week before the day that she and her family were scheduled to move to Emerald City, the airship that Chloe’s father was aboard had gone up in smoke. It was an accident, engine failure, probably, but the ship’s implosion had happened so suddenly that none of the crew members had managed to escape. William Price and seven others were presumed dead, and Chloe had been utterly devastated. But Max hadn’t written to her friend after she’d set foot in Emerald City, not once, and if she was being honest with herself, it was because a large part of her had been afraid of Chloe’s grief. As a thirteen-year-old who’d never even had to deal with the death of a grandparent, Max had had no idea how to talk to Chloe, what to say. So she said nothing at all, and had only realized years down the line that the only thing Chloe had needed from Max was for her to simply be there.  
  
“Yeah,” Chloe admitted. “I was pissed and hurt. But Max, we were kids. I don’t blame you for that any more than I do for breaking that snow globe I used to have. Remember?”  
  
“Of course, you had the snow doe since you were a baby. I felt terrible about that too.”  
  
“Well don’t,” Chloe said, so adamantly that Max reluctantly glanced back upwards to meet her eyes. “I swear to God I’m not holding any grudges, and it only makes me feel bad that you think I am. If I say officially, for the record, that I forgive you, will you stop stressing out about this?”  
  
“Maybe,” Max waffled, and Chloe let out an exasperated sigh.  
  
But still, she reached out and grabbed Max’s hand, shaking it lightly for emphasis. “Maxine Caulfield, I motherfucking forgive you.”  
  
The seriousness of her face contrasted with the added swear word brought a small smile to Max’s lips. Chloe smiled back at her, a genuine smile free of any bravado or teasing, and somehow, impossibly, Max felt a thousand times lighter. She hadn’t realized just how heavy that weight had been, pressing down on her chest with a force capable of overwhelming her, until it was lifted and she could breathe freely again.  
  
Not thinking, just acting, Max threw out her arms and caught Chloe in a hug. From their positions stretched out on the floor, this wasn’t an easy feat to pull off, and it unbalanced Max so that she was lying on top of Chloe more so than truly hugging her, but the message came across all the same. Chloe returned the hug, wrapping an arm around Max’s waist and chuckling into her hair.  
  
“Wow, I didn’t think that my words of extreme generosity would cause you to assault me.”  
  
“Shut up, Chloe,” Max mumbled into the crook of her neck, and she could feel her friend’s chest rising and falling in silent laughter. “I missed you.”  
  
“I missed you too, Caulfield. Now get off of me; you’re crushing my lungs.”  
  
Bracing one of her hands against the rough floor of the deck, Max rolled off of her with a huff. Chloe groaned dramatically.  
  
“God, Max, you weigh a ton. How can someone so skinny be so heavy?”  
  
“Rude,” Max countered, folding her arms underneath herself and resting her chin atop them. “You know you weigh more than I do.”  
  
“Only ‘cause I’m taller,” Chloe threw back, and they fell into a bickering banter that made Max feel like her heart was swelling; like it could burst from her chest at any moment, and yet even if it did, she didn’t think she’d mind. She could die happy then, and that was much more than she could’ve said for the last five years.  
  
After a while, when their lighthearted back-and-forth had exhausted itself, the conversation trailed off into a companionable silence. Chloe was the first to break it.  
  
“Do you still remember any of them? The constellations?”  
  
Glancing over, Max saw that Chloe’s attention was focused upward, her head tipped back to study the stars. Flipping over onto her back again, Max looked up at the thousands of pinpricks of light that dotted the absolute blackness above.  
  
“Um…” Max scanned the sky for the North Star, her usual point of reference. She spotted it and lifted her arm, tracing a finger over to Ursa Major. Chloe scooted her head closer to Max’s so that she could see from the shorter girl’s perspective.  
  
“There’s the Big Dipper, and the little one. Oh, and here’s Cassiopeia...”  
  
“You were always a lot better at finding them than me,” Chloe said, her eyes tracking the paths that Max’s finger made in the air.  
  
“William was a good teacher.”  
  
“Yeah, he was.”  
  
A flash of movement to Max’s left pulled her gaze to the side, and she saw that a flock of birds was flying in formation beside the airship. They were soundless in flight, the moonlight reflecting off of the glossy black feathers of their wings.  
  
Worried that she had just caused Chloe’s mood to plummet with the reminder of her father, Max groped blindly beside her until she found Chloe’s hand, and then she laced their fingers together.  
  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”  
  
“S’okay,” Chloe replied, squeezing Max’s hand. “You didn’t _really_ make me sad. I mean, yeah, I still miss my dad, but I was mostly just thinking.”  
  
“What about?” Max asked.  
  
It took Chloe a moment to reply.  
  
“Do you remember when he took us both to the islands on vacation? They had those crazy tall trees that were perfect for climbing there. Giant-ass branches.”  
  
“And you climbed all the way to the top, even though William was yelling at you to come down.”  
  
Max smiled, the memory as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Chloe had just turned fourteen, and it was the summer before everything had fallen apart. Back then, Max remembered nothing better than how quick Chloe was to laugh, and how happy she was. Up at the top of that tree, the branches had begun to bend and sway, but all Max and William could hear from sixty feet below was the sound of her exhilarated giggling.  
  
“Psh, like I was going to fall. Part squirrel, remember?”  
  
“Yes, that would explain the bushy tail,” Max deadpanned, and then squirmed to avoid being smacked. Chloe grinned an evil grin and went in for the kill, prodding Max in the ribcage where she was most ticklish. Max shrieked and fended Chloe off with her feet, but there are no winners in tickling wars.  
  
There was another memory from the trip to the islands, one that Max had successfully pushed to the back of her mind almost immediately after it had happened. But with the floodgates open, everything came tumbling back whether she wanted it to or not, and Max felt powerless to stop the onrush.  
  
On the last night of their vacation, Chloe had talked her into sneaking out of the cabin where they had been staying, and they’d sprinted into the woods on the tips of their toes, laughing breathlessly. The thrill of breaking the rules, of being out in the dark with no one else around and Chloe’s arm looped through hers had Max feeling like she was on top of the world, just as Chloe had looked from the highest branch of that tree.  
  
Out among the looming pines and cedars, they’d both stopped to catch their breaths. Then Chloe, riding the waves of rebelliousness, had wanted to dance even though there wasn’t any music. But Max had played along, falling into the steps of a silly routine the two of them had made up days earlier. While they spun—together and apart again, over and over—Max had looked up at Chloe like she had thousands of times before, but there’d been something so strange and different about this one. A slight disconnect, as if she was seeing someone new, her mind registering that long, strawberry blonde hair and those shining blue eyes for the first time.  
  
In the middle of all that strangeness, Max had realized that her heart was racing fast, and there was a heavy, sinking knot twisting in her stomach that was not altogether unpleasant. She couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful Chloe was, which wasn’t something that typically took up so much of Max’s brain space, but in the moment it had seemed a natural thought to have.  
  
The feeling had passed, at least in its full intensity, but it had shifted something in Max that couldn’t be put back again. She kept seeing Chloe, and thinking about her, in a way that wasn’t exactly best-friendly, and Max was thrown completely for a loop as a result.  
  
In that stairwell three nights ago, Max had looked at Chloe and seen only a friend, albeit a former one. And yet, as she returned from their late-night stargazing and conversation in the open air of the upper decks, changing into a pair of borrowed sleep clothes before sliding into bed, where she was surrounded by the unmistakable smell of Chloe—salty, with an undertone of undefinable sweetness—the last remaining walls between Max and her self-awareness crumbled away. And, with all possibility of denial thoroughly erased, there was no use denying that she was utterly screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realized after I finished this chapter that I sort of accidentally cut Joyce from the story...whoops. In my mind, David's not Chloe's stepdad in this au, but anything else Joyce-related is open to interpretation I guess. 
> 
> And, as always, thanks for reading!


	5. Day 4

**Day 4**  
  
Being in love with Chloe Price—if that’s even what Max _was_ , because in her mind the jury was still out on that and related questions—came with its fair share of trials and tribulations. When, for instance, the following morning she woke with her face only inches away from Chloe’s, Max panicked. She was up and out of bed and creeping toward the door before it sank in that there was nothing unusual about the situation and, in fact, it would only become strange if Chloe were to wake up on account of how Max’d scrambled away with mattress-shaking speed. Luckily Chloe was a heavy sleeper and didn’t stir, but it was a clear sign that Max needed to pull herself together before she did something truly embarrassing.  
  
It was an uphill battle. First, there was the storm; a surefire indication that some higher power wanted Max Caulfield to suffer in her newfound, newly-remembered feelings. On the airship, foul weather meant that the entire crew was forced to hunker down in the limited space below decks or risk being swept overboard by rogue winds. The claustrophobia of being trapped with essentially no escape quickly got to Max, and the resulting, constant proximity to Chloe ensured a certain degree of added torture in the experience.  
  
In spite of less-than-ideal circumstances, Max tried desperately to sort out her feelings. Did she really like Chloe? _No, stupid question_ , Max thought, and metaphorically scratched it from her head. Did she have feelings for Chloe? Well yes, obviously, and therein lay the problem. She didn’t have a clue how she was supposed to go about distinguishing each layer of her tangled emotions from one another, let alone define them. With Max’s pretty much negligible romantic experience, she lacked any sort of basis to work off of, and the fact that it was her _best friend_ she was having these feelings about made them all the more confusing.  
  
She might as well have been transported into her thirteen-year-old body, reliving the aftermath of The Fluke. For the week following The Fluke, she’d taken to calling it that in her head because it was the least-confusing way of thinking about it. But when it came down to it, Max’s ability to lie to herself was only subpar, and she’d eventually resorted to blocking The Fluke entirely from her memory. This, she was better at, though not enough to completely forget Chloe’s teasing remark, her own impulsive reaction, and the look in Chloe’s eyes afterwards, when she’d pulled away. Her expression had struck Max so profoundly because it had echoed her own internal state: shattered, and in awe.  
  
Unfortunately, Max couldn’t hide out among her jumbled thoughts and recollections for long before the others noticed. Seeing as how they were all currently cooped up in the kitchen together, it was practically an inevitability that her troubled daydreaming was perceived by somebody. And subsequently interrupted.  
  
“Max? Are you still alive in there?” Rachel asked, leaning in to wave her hand in front of Max’s face. Max flinched so badly that Rachel was startled in turn.  
  
“Oh, God! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Rachel apologized, and the fog around Max lifted, making room for guilt.  
  
“No, I’m sorry,” she replied, “I was just…thinking, I guess.”  
  
“Well, no worries about that. I was going to ask if you wanted to play Gin Rummy with us.”  
  
Rachel gestured over to the kitchen’s tiny table which Frank and Victoria were crowded around. Frank was shuffling a deck of cards while Victoria, and Pompidou, looked on.  
  
“Where’s Chloe?” Max asked, biting her tongue only after it was too late. Rachel gave her a weird look.  
  
“She went back to the nav perch like half an hour ago. Don’t you remember? She told you where she was going, but you just sort of mumbled nonsensically back at her.”  
  
“Did I?”  
  
It sounded vaguely familiar, now that Rachel was saying it. Max really needed to get back in touch with reality, or else Rachel was going to start thinking she was crazy. If that wasn’t already the case. Max felt the tips of her ears turning red.  
  
“Are you feeling all right?” the blonde girl asked, raising an eyebrow quizzically.  
  
Scratching aimlessly at the back of her neck, Max cleared her throat. “I’m just great. Er, is nobody on Jefferson duty right now?”  
  
Her attempt to change the subject only caused Rachel’s expression to grow more bemused.  
  
“Well, yeah. Visibility’s so bad that we can’t see far enough to spot his getaway ship, so we’re just sticking to the same course and keeping our fingers crossed. I swear you were sitting right next to me when we talked about this.”  
  
“I must not have been…paying attention,” Max mumbled, and whether or not Rachel even heard her response seemed not to matter. The other girl dropped down onto her knees right in front of the barrel Max was sitting on so that they were on the same level, her puzzlement melting away into concern. The sudden drama of it caught Max off guard.  
  
“Okay, now really, is something going on?”  
  
“What?” Max asked dumbly, and then quickly followed up with, “No, nothing.”  
  
“Did you and Price have a falling out?” Rachel persisted. “Because you’ve been giving her the cold shoulder all day.”  
  
Shit, well that was an unintentional side effect of her mild internal freak-out. It seemed like she probably owed Chloe an apology, or some sort of explanation. But Rachel was still staring at her, waiting for an answer, and Max briefly weighed her options. She decided on a partial truthfulness.  
  
“Nothing like that. It’s only…me stuff.”  
  
The last couple of words came out as a nervous squeak.  
  
“ _Me stuff_?”  
  
“Me stuff that involves Chloe,” Max admitted, the minor confession keeping further anxiety at bay.  
  
“Can you be a little more specific?”  
  
“Um…”  
  
With a grace that Chloe almost certainly wouldn’t have possessed under the same circumstances, Rachel threw in the proverbial towel.  
  
“Say no more, Max Caulfield. I won’t pry anything from you that you don’t want to share. I just hope that whatever stuff is going on between you and Chloe sorts itself out. Maybe you can’t see it, but she’s been happier than she was in a long time ever since you stepped foot on this ship.”  
  
“Thanks, Rachel,” Max said earnestly, a peculiar blossoming happening inside her chest.  
  
“Don’t mention it. Hey, do you want to borrow my jacket?”  
  
Rachel was already shrugging out of her streamlined leather coat when the question sank in for Max.  
  
“What?” she asked.  
  
“Oh, come on. You’re going out to the nav perch, aren’t you? I think there’s some unwritten rule like, _wherever Chloe is, so shall Max be also_. And vice versa.”  
  
“I wasn’t—I mean I hadn’t actually—” Max tried, before deciding that any denials were pointless. Even if she hadn’t quite made up her mind to seek Chloe out, there was a very good chance she would’ve anyway. Avoiding Chloe, while perhaps easier in a lot of ways, wasn’t ultimately what Max wanted to do.  
  
She accepted the proffered jacket because her own was sitting in the captain’s quarters, thanking Rachel again as she slipped her arms through the sleeves. Frank gruffly called after her to be careful, which was an oddly touching display of concern, even if he never looked up from the deck of cards.  
  
But the storm outside wasn’t getting any less intense even as the seconds ticked by, and so Max climbed up the ladder and threw open the hatch, bracing for an onslaught.  
  
The rain was practically horizontal, and it slashed through the sky like blades, cutting across her uncovered face. Max threw up an arm to shield herself, little good that it did. The airship was in the middle of a storm cloud, drifting right through the dark gray haze. From what glimpses that she could catch around the wall of rain, the deck looked almost eerie; haunted, like a ghost ship. With no one else around, the spookiness got to Max a bit, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.  
  
Guiding herself cautiously along the side of the ship with one hand clutching the railing, Max worked her way along towards the stern until she was across from the raised glass dome. And then there was nothing left but to make that final, untethered dash over to it, which she did at an angle to avoid being knocked too far off course by the wind. Her _dash_ was more of a lunging shuffle than an actual running pace, but she reached the perch without losing her footing or being blown into oblivion, and that counted for quite a lot.  
  
Fighting the wind one more time, she wrestled the door open, and then slammed it shut behind her. Chloe, who had been lounging on a chair with her legs propped unceremoniously against the console of controls, nearly toppled to the floor in surprise. Her chair began to tip dangerous backwards, and she threw herself forward to counter the teetering, planting both feet firmly on the ground.  
  
“Jesus, Max! Damn, you almost gave me a heart attack.”  
  
“Sorry, sorry!” Max apologized, rapidly blinking rainwater from her eyes. “I didn’t mean to break down the door. It’s, uh, a little crazy out there.”  
  
“No shit,” Chloe said, an echo of hardness underneath her tone so that Max almost felt as if the other girl was snapping at her. But just as quickly as it had appeared, all hardness fell away and Chloe stood, reaching out. “Get over here, Caulfield. You look like a drowned rat somebody pulled out of the sewer, and I don’t want you to catch a cold or something.”  
  
Chloe didn’t exactly have a stash of extra clothes with her, but she could offer her own oversized windbreaker which had mostly dried off. After squeezing the excess water from her hair, Max stripped off her outermost layers until she was in only her shirt and underwear. She joined Chloe on the floor, the chair forgone, and spread the windbreaker modestly across her lap. Under normal circumstances, Max wouldn’t have felt the need to cover up in front of Chloe, but something seemed inherently different about it just then. Besides which, she was cold, and even a thin blanket of crinkly, waterproof material was better than no blanket at all.  
  
With no qualms about getting comfortable, Chloe stretched out onto her stomach while Max remained cross-legged.  
  
“So, why’d you come out here anyway? Living the pirate life not exciting enough for you? You needed the extra thrill of walking across an airborne ship in the middle of a wind-and-rain storm?”  
  
“I came for your stellar company, of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Chloe repeated, throwing a wry smile Max’s way. “Actually, though, I thought you wanted to stay below decks with everyone else.”  
  
It was a bit embarrassing that Max couldn’t even remember whether Chloe had explicitly asked her if she wanted to come along to the nav perch in the first place. She hedged her bets with what seemed like the safest response. “I—changed my mind.”  
  
“Sure, okay. Mind if I smoke?”  
  
She was already pulling a lone cigarette from her pocket, and Max shot her an incredulous look.  
  
“Chloe, we’re in a confined space with no airflow.”  
  
“Fine, fine,” she said, tucking the cigarette away again with nothing more than a few almost unintelligible grumbles. “Goddamn it always raining on my goddamn parade.”  
  
A flash of lightning from not too far away made Max lift her head, and she watched as the dark clouds turned a deep purple for a split second. Then the light faded, and all she could see—and hear—was the downpour striking the dome from every direction. It was almost like being on a raft in the middle of a storming sea, except that the weather couldn’t touch her under the protective bubble of glass. “Hey, uh, I’ve been wondering,” Max started, trying to keep her voice nonchalant. For the record, she entirely blamed Frank and Victoria for what she was about to ask. “Did you and Rachel ever have, like, a past? In a romantic way, I mean.”  
  
She couldn’t keep the blush off of her face afterwards, especially when she glanced over to see Chloe’s perplexed expression. Her eyebrows were scrunched together in a way that Max found inexplicably adorable, which in part could’ve explained the blushing.  
  
“Now you really are acting weirder than normal. That was so out of the blue, Max.”  
  
And now Max wanted to go crawl under a rock. Preferably one that was someplace very, very far away.  
  
“I know, I know. Forget I even said anything.”  
  
“It’s not actually a big deal,” Chloe replied, surprising Max by not immediately letting the subject drop. “Because there’s nothing to tell. We’ve never even drunkenly made out, which is more than I can say about Victoria…that’s a long story. And okay, I _may_ have liked Rachel like _that_ at one point, but nothing ever happened, and I haven’t thought of her as anything other than a friend for a while.”  
  
There was something almost fragile, and shy, in Chloe’s face after she stopped talking, and her fingernails picked at the grooves in the floorboards beneath her chin. It made Max’s heart hurt to think that she had tugged at a sensitive thread, and the pain only compounded with the knowledge that Chloe had chosen to talk about it anyway, to her.  
  
“Are you disappointed that it didn’t work out?” she asked, trying to sound as gentle as possible.  
  
Chloe appeared to think about the question for a moment, her head tipping slightly to the side. “Nah, not really. She’s a great first mate, and I wouldn’t want to screw that up, you know? No, things just…work out—and I’m not gonna say _for the best_ , because that’s a load of shit, but they happen the way they happen and then maybe, eventually, you get what you always actually wanted. Even if it’s not how you thought you wanted it.”  
  
A few beats of silence followed this before Max dared to speak up.  
  
“Such wisdom, Chloe Price.”  
  
“Oh, fuck off, Max,” Chloe shot back, but she was actually grinning, so Max couldn’t feel any regret over her (completely well-intentioned) mocking.  
  
With that grin just beginning to dim into a lighthearted smile, Chloe looked so achingly beautiful, so utterly beyond comparison. An overwhelming part of Max wanted to keep her like that, to save the moment, and her fingers itched with wanting her father’s camera. She let out a quiet groan because of that wanting, just under her breath, but Chloe must’ve heard because both of her eyebrows rose.  
  
“Uh, is something wrong? Also, what’s with all the creepy staring? Is there, er, something on my face?”  
  
Max could’ve kicked herself. Instead, she exhaled slowly and replied, “No, your face is food-free. I was just thinking about how much I miss taking photographs. I got so desperate over the last couple of weeks that I actually started hanging around Nathan Prescott and his family’s studio. But now…"  
  
“Yeah, I remember how much you liked to—oh, shit!”  
  
Jumping to her feet, Chloe hurried over to the control console as if she’d been struck with a sudden revelation. Luckily, she seemed excited rather than in trouble, as Max had feared the instant Chloe had broken off her sentence with cursing.  
  
Because Chloe spent a decent amount of time piloting the airship from the perch, it had naturally accumulated a sizeable degree of clutter. Max watched curiously as she shifted through the contents of a box that had been half-lying across a rather important-looking lever. She whirled around a second later with something in her hands, triumphant.  
  
It was a camera, and one that Max instantly recognized. The first camera she had ever stepped behind the lens of, and the one that had spurred her burgeoning interest in photography. Black and bulky, it was an early handheld model, barely released for the public before William had come into possession of it. Because he’d never have been able to afford such an expensive hobby on his own, the camera had been a gift from a friend. Ever since then, he’d been avidly and enthusiastically capturing his favorite moments on film, right up until Max’s last memory of him.  
  
But here Chloe was, placing this boxlike treasure into Max’s hands.  
  
“Chloe, I can’t—”  
  
“Yes, you can! Max, I want you to have it, really. My dad wouldn’t want it to be just sitting in here, collecting dust. I know you’ll put it to good use.”  
  
“This is—I mean—thank you!”  
  
Placing the camera very safely and gingerly to the side, Max threw her arms around Chloe in a hug. They fit into each other effortlessly, and Max held on tight, wishing she never had to let go.  
  
“You’re welcome, loser,” Chloe said, and Max could feel the gentle reverberations of her voice through her chest before Chloe stepped away. “Now, are you going to test it out or what?”  
  
“That depends,” Max replied, picking up the camera again. “Are you offering to be my model?”  
  
“Only if you get my good side.”  
  
As Max lifted the camera to her eye, she relished the sturdy feel of the elegant piece of machinery in her hands, and the comforting familiarity of seeing the world through a lens once again. Chloe initially arranged herself in a dramatic, mysterious pose, but quickly dropped it for something more natural, and happier. Max moved so that she was in frame—blue hair, blue eyes, against a blur of gray-blue—and then she released the shutter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer gap in between chapters! I should have the next one up sometime next week. Only one left to go!


	6. Day 5

**Day 5**  
  
A sharp clatter startled Max from sleep, and for an instant she thought she was back in her room at Blackwell, waking up to a pirate attack. She sat bolt upright in bed, but the screams and booming of canon fire were absent. Instead, someone was pounding loudly on the door to the captain’s quarters. noticed fleetingly that Chloe was missing, which meant either that she was busy with her middle-of-the-night shift at the controls, or that something out of the ordinary was happening. Since Max could see the faint rays of early morning shining through the porthole window, the latter seemed to be the case.  
  
“Max!” someone shouted through the door. It sounded like Victoria. “Get up! Jefferson just made a pit stop, and Chloe wants you at the bow."  
  
“I’ll be right there!” Max called in reply, her voice hoarse with sleep.  
  
Victoria must’ve been content that Max would drag herself out of bed without further cajoling because Max heard the patter of her footsteps as she hurried away. Not knowing exactly what to expect outside, Max dressed in a rush and pushed the door open tentatively, relieved not to have found herself in the middle of a battle or something equally beyond her skillset.  
  
The deck was a flurry of activity as three people—and a parrot—stirred up an impressive amount of commotion. Rachel had a telescope held up to her face and was shouting information at Victoria, who had climbed up one of the tethering cables and was doing something to the balloon. Max turned to see Chloe at the wheel, so to speak, swinging the airship in a swooping, leftward curve, toward a floating city in the hazy distance. She’d slid open the front-facing panel of glass in the nav perch—which Max hadn’t even known was possible until then—in order to shout occasional instructions at the other two.  
  
For a brief instant after Max left the captain’s quarters, there was no sign of Frank, but then he pulled himself upward through the hatch from below decks, dragging a sleeve against his forehead.  
  
“All weapons are functional and ready to fire!” he yelled over at Chloe, and she nodded in acknowledgement.  
  
“Okay!” she shouted, “Get that ramp lowered! We’re about three minutes away from docking! Rach, come take the controls!”  
  
“Aye, Captain!”  
  
Folding the telescope into a compact cylinder, Rachel danced over to the perch and swapped places with Chloe, who jumped down to the deck. She noticed Max straightaway, and threw a corralling arm around her shoulders, steering them both nearer to Victoria and the stern of the airship.  
  
“Are you going to try to capture Jefferson?” Max asked.  
  
“Capture, corner, castrate…I’ll leave that up to Rachel,” Chloe replied, shrugging when Max raised her eyebrows at the last option. “But Max, you’re coming with me. I’m not leaving you behind on this ship, just in case it gets boarded by some pissed off guards. Could be dangerous.”  
  
Going along with Chloe didn’t strike her as particularly safe either, but she supposed that at least in that scenario there was someone looking out for her. And she could look out for Chloe, in her own small way.  
  
“All right, just as long as I don’t have to carry a pistol,” she replied, eyeing the piece that was strapped to Chloe’s hip.  
  
“Suit yourself.”  
  
Chloe’s arm dropped from her shoulder, but she reached the same hand out to hold Max’s. Without stopping to overthink it, Max intertwined their fingers together.  
  
“Listen up, morons!” Chloe yelled, drawing the attention of her crew. “Jefferson landed only a few minutes ago, which means he can’t have gotten far. We’ll split up in twos: Rachel and Vic, you’ll work your way northeast while Max and I will head northwest. Frank, you’ll stay aboard with the guns trained on Jefferson’s getaway ship in case he tries to flee again. Everyone got that?”  
  
Some scattered “yep”s and “got it”s followed, and Max felt the undercurrent of tense excitement. She didn’t know how many times they’d gotten close to Jefferson, but after the four day chase the crew seemed eager to seize their goal. Even Max was keyed for this final stretch, internalizing the impatient atmosphere that hung in the air.  
  
They crossed over the ramp once Rachel had maneuvered the ship into place, all except for Frank, who scurried back down the hatch to man the guns. With her hand still linked with Chloe’s, Max surveyed the harbor around them, crowded and sprawling, which opened up into a coastal market. There were too many people milling about for four more to make an impact, though the downside of this was that Jefferson would have a much easier time blending in with the masses.  
  
Rachel and Victoria headed to the right while Chloe tugged Max leftward, and she scrambled to keep up before Chloe dislocated her shoulder. They weaved around stalls and through shopping townspeople, the obstacles preventing Chloe from breaking out into a sprint as she so clearly wanted to. Max was secretly glad for this, because the other girl could be surprisingly fast when she was set on something, and Max didn’t relish the idea of running after her.  
  
“He probably went to ground,” Chloe grunted as Max narrowly jerked her out of the path of a moving cart, “But he’s got to be close. Hopefully he doesn’t know anyone here.”  
  
“Do you think there are people helping him? Hiding him?”  
  
“There better not be, that would make this way more difficult.”  
  
Chloe paused when they were both brought up short by a pack of screaming children playing tag, and then continued to muse, a bit breathlessly. “He really didn’t need to stop so soon, not if the airship was even partway stocked, so this shouldn’t have been a move of desperation…”  
  
A streak of red light shot across the sky, causing Chloe to trail off. Max watched it streak in an arc over the marketplace, then whipped her head around to the direction it had come from. Behind them.  
  
“Shit, that’s Frank!” Chloe exclaimed, confirming Max’s fears. “We need to get back there, now!”  
  
They wound their way back to the ship even more haphazardly than they’d come, bumping elbows against wooden supports and passing strangers. Max pulled off a feat she hadn’t known she was capable of when she leapt over a cat, and luckily both parties escaped that near encounter without injury. She knew Chloe would have been impressed under normal circumstances.  
  
The ramp was still extended when they skidded to a halt, beating Victoria and Rachel by about ten seconds. Frank wasn’t immediately visible when they clambered aboard, but then he came staggering out from around the starboard side of the nav perch, waving a telescope while Pompidou swooped around his head, squawking in distress.  
  
“He’s gone! He’s fucking gone!”  
  
“What?” Chloe said, inhaling the word like a gasp. Max froze, and sensed rather than saw everyone around her do the same.  
  
“It was a goddamn fake out!” Frank yelled, gesticulating wildly with the telescope. “The bastard got right on another ship as soon as you all left; and then a couple of military-grade zeppelins come box me in while Jefferson just sails the fuck away! They were Prescott ships, both of them.”  
  
“Well, damn it,” said Rachel, looking a little shell shocked.  
  
With the Prescott family on his side, Max imagined that Jefferson would have no problem pulling off a stunt like that. And to think, she’d been fraternizing with the enemy on a regular basis, making occasional, stilted small talk with Nathan Prescott right in his father’s shop. She tried not to feel too badly about that.  
  
“You didn’t try to fire at them?” Victoria asked, leaving Frank with a scandalized expression on his face.  
  
“Shit no, they would’ve decimated me! They didn’t stick around anyway, just long enough for Jefferson to gain some distance, and then they threw up a smoke screen. No way to track them through that.”  
  
As the full meaning of Frank’s words sunk in, Chloe’s entire body seemed to deflate, sagging until her shoulder brushed against Max’s.  
  
“Guess that puts us back at square one,” Rachel remarked, and the general dejection was palpable.  
  
“Sorry, Rach,” Chloe offered.  
  
Rachel sighed, but managed a small smile in response. “Not your fault, captain. We underestimated him this time, but it won’t happen twice. I’ll just…go ahead and start preparations to leave.”  
  
Channeling their disappointment into productivity, the rest of the crew trudged after her. Max pitched in to help Frank retract the ramp, cranking it back into place aboard the ship. When she was done, she brushed her hands off on the front of her pants and scanned the deck.  
  
Max found Chloe leaning against the far side of the airship, her arms resting on the railing. She was focused outward across the blue expanse, but spared Max a glance when the shorter girl came up alongside her.  
  
“Sorry about Jefferson,” Max said. “It must be hard to see him escape like that, especially since you got so close.”  
  
“Yeah,” Chloe answered, flicking a loose splinter of wood free of the railing, “it is. But it’s not like it’s never happened before. We’ll fry him next time.”  
  
“I have complete faith.”  
  
Chloe turned away from the open sky, angling her body toward Max’s, and Max mirrored her. Most of the pensiveness had vanished from Chloe’s face, replaced by...was that nervousness? A kaleidoscope of butterflies broke free in Max’s stomach.  
  
“Look, Max,” she began, “I know that you didn’t sign up for any of this, and now that we’re not hot on anyone’s trail anymore, you probably want to head back to Arcadia Bay. If that’s what you want, I’d completely understand.”  
  
Max didn’t know exactly what compelled her to do it, what gave her the extra push to step over the edge. Maybe it was the look in Chloe’s eyes, and the way her hope seemed to be dwindling with every word, as if she’d been waiting for Max to interrupt and contradict her. Or maybe it was Max’s own nervous energy that had been rattling inside her since the day before finally reaching a breaking point, demanding liberation. And perhaps it was neither of those things, and for once she’d managed to carry a moment to its inevitable conclusion, with impeccable timing.  
  
All Max knew was that Chloe had barely finished talking when she leaned up onto her toes and pulled the blue-haired girl into a kiss.  
  
For a terrifying instant, Chloe was motionless against her, surprised. But then she unfroze, reaching her hands up to cradle the sides of Max’s face, her thumbs rubbing along Max’s cheeks beside her ears. Max let her arms fall to Chloe’s waist, twining around her, and kept them there even as she reluctantly broke away, taking half a step backward.  
  
“I think I’d like to stay,” she said, and watched as Chloe’s face lit up brilliantly.  
  
“Oh, would you?” Chloe replied, a certain slyness creeping into her voice. It was enough to set off a fresh round of jitters in Max’s stomach. “Any reason in particular?”  
  
“You’re way too pleased with yourself,” she retorted.  
  
Chloe just laughed, recklessly, throwing her head backward, but it had nothing on the grin that stretched across Max’s face. Her cheeks would be sore at this rate, and yet she couldn’t be bothered to notice or care.  
  
“You better fucking believe I am, Caulfield! It’s not every day I get kissed by a pretty girl.”  
  
Max shoved her in the shoulder, playfully, but didn’t draw her hand away immediately. Chloe placed one of her own over Max’s trapping it in place.  
  
“I’m kidding,” she clarified. “Well, not really, but Max, you know you mean a lot more to me than that. And I’m pretty damn out of my mind that you actually just put the moves on me. I mean, I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about all that stuff that happened before you left.”  
  
“I could never forget,” Max said, meaning it with every piece of herself. And then, because her eyes were inexplicably threatening to tear up, she added, “You obviously weren’t going to be the one to take the initiative.”  
  
“What can I say, Super Max? I guess my lady balls just aren’t as big as yours.”  
  
She laughed again when Max rolled her eyes and muttered, “figures,” under her breath, but afterwards Chloe was gazing at her fondly, something soft behind her blue eyes.  
  
“So, do you really want to stay?”  
  
Max smiled up at her. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”  
  
“Then it looks like you’re stuck with me,” Chloe said, and she leaned right in for another kiss, this time with more purpose, like it was a promise.  
  
When the airship pulled away from the dock, carrying them away and into the unknown, Max she she’d finally found her place.  
  
And she stepped into the blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride!


End file.
